Spindlebotch I

and the Scroll of Inglorious Scatterbrains

Noob Tank Journal Entry # 1

I thought I’d start my tanking off easy and Spindle 1 a pledge of the day. On Normal this is the first group dungeon faced by low level characters in the Daggerfall Covenant. I’ve soloed this with level 5 characters. So how much harder can it be on vet?

First I queued with Lilith, got a high CP group and felt entirely superfluous. They were blazing through the simple dungeon anyway and despite being a Stamina specced character, I was only partly able to keep ahead of them so I could turn the heavy hitters away from the group. It soon felt like I was mostly just racing the other players. With the stupid result that when we got to the last boss, I was so in rushing-the-big-mobs mode that I forgot to activate the Hard Mode Scroll. (As did everyone else.) I realized my mistake, informed the group and we took a wipe just to re-set and activate the scroll for the extra Undaunted key. No problem. I taunted the boss, turned her 180 degrees away from the group, never dodge rolled a thing, but still, Lilith barely took any damage from the final boss’s attacks, even on Hard Mode. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to what kind of heals-per-second the max CP healer was serving me. Feeling silly but confident I queued with Red next and got a low CP group. I think they were all CP50-300, maybe one exception. Although it took a little bit longer to kill everything, again we pretty rushed through the dungeon and this time I remembered to read the Scroll of Glorious Battle.

Oops. Shouldn’t have done that this time.

I taunted the boss, turned her 180 degrees away from the group right into the staircase thing where I’d held her with Lilith. And watched the group starting to die, one by one. Sometimes they weren’t getting out of the red AoE. Mostly they just seemed to die off randomly – only later did I realize it was the Arachnophobia attack, which turns the screen white and which you kind of have to dodge roll from as a dps or healer. I try to resurrect the healer but the rez gets interrupted by incoming damage. What’s worse, it soon becomes apparent that unlike Lilith, my fake-ish tank Red doesn’t have enough mitigation to keep her alive for very long throughout the
white screen damage either, even with 35k health and Daedric Mail + block. After all, the only Sword and Board skill Red has is the taunt. Result: Wipe.

OK. No point in Hard Mode then. We respawn, leave the Scroll, engage again. I try to drag her further away from the group to give everybody room to get out of red.

Alas, same problem again.

Even though we’re not on Hard Mode anymore, the healer and DPS drop like flies. Maybe Red’s lack of Ebon Armor is being felt? As I’m trying to dodge roll to avoid taking too much damage, I realize I’ve positioned myself badly since my dodge roll bumps into the staircase and I get trapped inside the red AoE and die again. This time one of the DPS survives me and soldiers on for a while longer before falling. Not sure if he got the white screen attack or one of those heavy attacks the tank is supposed to block, but it’s another wipe. And this time, I’m being the moron causing it.

Feeling more than a little embarrassed, I apologize, quit the group, and vow to only take Red to vet dungeons in her real role as damage dealer. My bank’s kinda full though, so let’s not remove her tanking gear yet.

Little do I know how glad I’ll soon be that I still have that stuff. (See next update: Red Goes Tanky Again.)